Family archive van der Sluys / van der Sluis / Vandersluys

I am descended from an Amsterdam theatre family of the 1700s called ‘van der Sluys'. The first recorded bearer of the name van der Sluys in our line of descent to be found in the Dutch archives so far is a man with the given name of ‘Marten’. We do know that he married Paulijntje Lubbertdr van Diephout . She was a daughter of Lubbert Janz van Diephout (d.1615) and his wife Mayke Theunis van Essen (1580?-1643) who were Mennonites.The Van Diephouts had family connections with the intellectual circle of the famous Dutch-Jewish philosopher Spinoza. Marten and Paulijntje had three children of whom two seem to have died as infants. Their surviving second child, Jan, was born in Amsterdam and baptised into the Dutch Reformed Church in 1646. We have a total record of our direct line to me from that point. We are seeking to at this stage to research Marten's ancestry back into the 16th Century and beyond if possible.

The archivist of this family archive is Stephen van der Sluys.